


The Root of All Hatred

by ELL10TTE



Category: Kagerou Project, Mekakucity Actors
Genre: Blood and Gore, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mild Gore, Other, Past Character Death, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, god they HATE each other christ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7216618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELL10TTE/pseuds/ELL10TTE
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sibling Love" is an ideal they could never reach.</p><p>Alternatively Titled: Shintaro Kisaragi and the terrible, no-good, very bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Root of All Hatred

**Author's Note:**

> whenever i get horrifically suicidal i write some of The Good Angst and this time it just happened to be about the kisaragi siblings, specifically how much they hate each others guts (quite literally in some cases).
> 
> not to mention the depressing lack of kagepro fics, so i figured why not.

It’s two in the afternoon by the time Shintaro manages to drag his own rotting carcass out of bed and he regrets it almost immediately.

To be honest he’s already been awake for several hours at that point, lying bitterly on his side and avoiding all sense of purpose like the entire world is out to get him or something. It’s a stupid notion that he himself understands is incorrect, but it does feel that way a lot. Like he’s some dumb video game character, the same as the ones that he plays all the time now that she’s gone.

Some dumb protagonist, pointless enough that you, the player, get to name him. And since you don’t care all that much anyways you just go ahead and name him AAAA. And then AAAA the useless, nameless protagonist can go against the big-boss, the “World”. It’s just AAAA against the world, Shintaro against the world. The World, the big-boss with enough health and attack power to one-shot him, every single fucking time he even bothers to get up out of bed and pretend to be a normal human being.

One shot. K.O.

Every single goddamn time.

Uselessly long and convoluted metaphors aside though, Shintaro manages to blink himself out of a sleep at the tender hours of seven in the morning. He’s woken up suicidal (what else is new) but something about it today is off. Something is different about _today’s_ suicidal, and while he can’t quite put a finger on it he doesn’t like it nonetheless.

Shintaro checks his phone and then rolls back to sleep. Specifically, _attempted_ sleep. Recently, good sleep has been hard to come by. During his old days as an insomniac he loved sleep, craved the stuff even. He just never managed to get any of it was all. Nowadays though, the challenge came to him _after_ he fell asleep. He’s been plagued with nightmares recently, enough that his opinions on sleeping are starting to drastically change.

Long story short he tried to sleep while simultaneously trying not to sleep and eventually just got sick of the whole charade. And then seven hours later (yikes) he finally rolled out of bed looking and feeling like a marimo. Even as he brushes his teeth and washes his face he can’t quite shake the feeling of….. Bad suicidal. Which is an ironic thing to say but that’s what it is. There is good suicidal, and there is bad suicidal.

He should be more careful, he thinks.

Shintaro scratches at his empty stomach, letting himself pick and play with the scabs of still-dirty wounds, descending down the stairs in loud, jerky movements. His legs are stiff and he practically bangs downed the stairs, much to the anger of his little sister.

“Bro!” She yells, cutting him off before he even reaches the foot of the stairs. “You could stand to be a bit quieter, I’m calling my producer and I can’t hear what she’s saying!” Momo returns to the call, muttering this and that about her ‘stupid older brother, etc, etc.’ Shintaro quietly listens in, still stopped in the middle of the staircase since he does’t trust himself enough to keep walking lest he disturb the precious princess of the household. Ugh, fucking end him already.

He waits until Momo hangs up before continuing on his way to the kitchen, racking his brains for breakfast (or lunch?? Maybe he should just wait until dinner…) ideas. Shintaro rounds the corner into the kitchen and watches his little sister pick sullenly at a grilled cheese sandwich. There’s tomato in it, seems like something she’d do.

“Hey, Starchild,” he calls out to her, and she looks at him. There’s barely masked irritation in her eyes, which pisses him off more than it should. Oh, come on, Starchild. I’m already Bad Suicidal, what more would you wish upon me?

“Don’t call me Starchild.” is her response. Shintaro waits for more, something more grating and sarcastic like he’d taught her, but nothing comes. For a lot of their childhood, Momo followed Shintaro. Their parents were often busy and so he took it upon himself to be a Good Older Brother and take care of her as best he could. Unfortunately, this resulted in Momo copying him both in thoughts, actions, and most noticeably, speech patterns. Which was both funny and kind of painful to watch happen, for the most part.

Fortunately enough this stopped happening after Shintaro’s depression got the better of him and he became more of a sarcastic and bitter twat than he already was if that was even possible, and Momo decided she was disgusted by his very being and stopped hanging around him so much. Good for her, honestly. If they kept spending so much time together she’d become a worthless heap of trash just like himself and then maybe she’d never have become an idol.

He shakes the thought out of his head and blames it all on the Bad Suicidal. His thoughts always seem to wander towards the worst when he's like this.

Momo has to be an idol. Momo has to be loved by everyone, Momo has to be happy. She has to live a good life, she has to turn out better than him.

Shintaro misses those days more than he really should. Misses the days when Momo would jump at the idea of getting to sit in her brother's room while he did homework, or played games, or watched TV. When she would look at him with love, and excitement, and happiness... Or really anything outside of strange, passive-aggressive hatred.

Petty. That's what she is. She's petty.

Shintaro clears his head again. It's the Bad Suicidal, he mutters to himself. Momo rolls her eyes.

Shintaro does love his little sister, believe it or not. He loves her so much. Shintaro would honestly die for her happiness, though of course, he’s too…. Like himself to tell her that. Besides, she’d just scoff at him and call him some shady sis-con if he ever told her he loved her, which is disgusting to even consider.

“But you’re the star here,” he responds, grabbing a mug from the cupboard (he’s not sure why he bothers since he’s just going to fill it with coke anyways).

Momo chuckles at him in a way that sounds more like a sneer than a laugh. “Seriously, stop saying shit like that Shin!” But it’s not as cheerful as she makes it sound, he knows. “Oh yeah!” Her eyes brighten up in an instant. “I want you to take a look at the background mix for my next song and make any edits you want, can you do that for me?”

Shintaro gives her a withering look and she pouts. “Come on bro, I know you can do it and you know you can do it, cut it out with the tsundere act already!” She pulls a flashdrive out of thin air and puts it on the counter in front of him. “You know you want to,” she teases with a smile. He takes it and stuffs it into the pocket of his hoodie. To be honest he really doesn’t. She knows he doesn't, and he knows he doesn't. But he knows he’s going to. They both do.

Momo gets up from the counter and slides her plate of half-eaten grilled cheese towards him. “I’ve gotta bounce, you can have the rest of this is you like!” She laces up her shoes and runs to the door with almost inhuman speed, orange hair swishing behind her. It's mesmerizing, beautiful even, Shintaro thinks for one absurd second.

“No, I don’t want this I can’t--” the door slams shut in the middle of his sentence and he flinches a bit at the sound. “... finish it.” Shintaro looks down sullenly at the sandwich in front of him. It's grilled well to be honest, golden brown and crispy on the edges. The cheese is melted on the sides and burnt just a bit. The tomato sort of ruins it for him, making the bread soggy. It sort of looks like a wet gym sock or maybe some poor suckers internal organs. He’d never really been a fan of tomato to be honest. Either way though, his stomach gives a growl just looking at it.

He pushes it away and stalks back up to his room, disgusted with himself.

Might as well get working on Momo’s song or something.

* * *

 Momo is pissed.

Of course it _has to be today_ that her fuck-up of an older brother drags his ass out of his dungeon of a room. Of course. He had to actually shower, brush his teeth, try to eat for once in his life, pretend to be a normal person. Today.

She wishes that he’d never get up again sometimes, that he’d cut too deep with his goddamn scissors one night and his organs would fall out of his worthless stomach.

He thinks he’s so tragic, Momo thinks. He thinks he’s humanity’s most miserable person what with his stupid depression and self-harm and fake anorexia. Her stomach rumbles and she thinks about the sandwich she gave to Shintaro just to confirm her hatred for him.

Oh no, I can’t finish it! Ha! What a fake.

 _He_ doesn’t have to keep a certain weight, a certain level of fitness, a certain BMI, to be an idol. _He_ isn’t constantly chastised by his manager for gaining or losing a certain amount of roundness in his face, or trash-talked by gossip papers for binge-eating or purging or getting lipo-sections of whatever. Momo doesn’t even do any of that shit! She's a fucking middle-schooler for chrissake! Where do they get off on this shit! Libel, all of it.

Oh look at that, I remembered vocab word!

I bet Shintaro knew it already. He knows fucking everything.

Momo can’t quite remember when she started to hate his guts so much. She remembers hating him when he dropped out of school despite his perfect grades when she herself couldn’t even get by with a _normal_ F (a 6 in math, who _does_ that??). She remembers hating him when he first fell into this stupid depression of his, pitying himself oh-so-much like _he_ was the one who was impacted the most when his friend fell of that building. That girl had a family, you asshole. It’s not like they packed up _their_ bags and high-tailed it out of each others lives following her death like _you_ did.

Momo smoothes down her bangs and huffs out a breath. At this rate she would get noticed just for being in such a monumentally bad mood, and _then_ for being an idol, _and then_ her afternoon would just be ruined completely.

She reaches the store, still steaming from the ears, and realizes that she doesn’t remember what she came out to buy. Instead of trying to remember, she absent-mindedly browses the stationary section, chewing at a strand of her own hair and paging through cute little planner after cute little planner, still trying to pinpoint the exact moment when she first started to hate Shintaro Kisaragi.

Maybe it was when he first came home from school with that dumb boyfriend of his, as well as the rest of his little posse. Shintaro’s dumb, aloof boyfriend who was _just Momo’s type_. He was tall, cute, laughed like the sun, and he was doting as hell. The part that ruined it though was that he was all those things towards _Shintaro Kisaragi_ . Shintaro, who was bitter and fucked up and didn’t love _anyone_. Not Momo, not his family, not his friends. But apparently he was able to find it within himself to love _H_ _aruka._

He didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve each other. Not when Momo herself couldn’t find someone to love her, or someone to love. Not even her own brother.

Or maybe it was when Shin first started to distance himself from her. The more she thought about it the more likely it seemed Shintaro, the Ideal Older Brother, fucking off and abandoning her right when she needed him the most. One family member was enough, but losing two in the same week was _fucking brutal._

Yes, that makes sense. The root of all hatred was when he left her all alone like that to wallow in his own lack of self-worth instead. That was it.

And now that she knows why she hates him, her hatred is justified, Momo thinks.

* * *

Shintaro leans back in his dumb spinny-chair and stares listlessly at the ceiling. He lets his headphones fall back around his neck, no longer willing to listen to the garbage he was producing.

Ene appears on his screen. “Master…” she says, pouting when that doesn’t draw his attention. She deletes his version of Momo’s song, which he’s been working on for several hours. Shintaro keeps staring at the ceiling.

“Thanks for that, Ene," He huffs, not bothering to look at her.

Ene crosses her arms, satisfied with her work. “Well I haven’t fucked with you for a while so I figured--”

“That wasn’t sarcastic,” Shintaro cuts her off, simply lacking the energy to continue listening to her.

“Oh..” Ene trails off, and Shintaro feels just a little bit sorry for it. He sits back up and looks at her.

“No, like! I wanted to start over because I uh, I didn’t-- well I wasn’t liking where I was going with it so… thanks for…… erasing my file……….” he slumps back into his chair, giving up midway through trying to cheer up his cyber companion. Why is he bothering with this anyways? It’s not like he even likes her or, or even _cares_ about her. If anything Shintaro hates her, but even _that_ seems like too strong of an emotion. A waste of energy, all of it.

Shintaro stands up. Ene asks where he’s going and he just replies “Bathroom” half-heartedly. His feet shuffle and drag on his way there, legs heavy. When he gets there he flicks on the lights, momentarily blinded by the fluorescent bulbs. The fan whirrs to life above him and he stands dumbly in the doorway as if in a trance. The dull drone lulls him into a daze that he couldn’t seem to snap himself out of.

This is it, he thinks.

* * *

 Momo is still wandering the streets, curses about her brother still fresh on her tongue, when Ene jumps to her phone screen. “Momo!!” She yells, and Momo has to violently tear out her earbuds for fear of being deafened by the sound. Ene apologizes profusely when she puts them back in, volume on the lowest notch just to be safe.

“What, what, what is it?” Momo asks, trying to make her voice as sweet and nice as possible. Truth be told she doesn't much care for Ene either, what with her strange devotion to Shintaro. The ‘master!!’ schtick really wears on you after a while, and the fact that she actually seems to care about him pisses off Momo more than she cares to admit. _But,_ Ene _does_ fuck around with Shin’s stuff a lot, and generally pisses him off like it's on her to-do list or something, so she at least respects the cyber-girl _a little bit._

“I think something’s happened to Master!” Ene cries, raising the volume back up to max. Momo has to fight down the impulse just to say “fantastic” and instead inquires what is wrong, turning the volume back down as she does it.

“I don’t know,” Ene was getting a little worked up, pissing off Momo more and more by the second. “I messed around with him a bit and he got up to go to the bathroom, and, well…” Ene fumbles around with her sleeves anxiously. “He’s been in there for a few hours now…”

This snaps things back into perspective for Momo. God, she’d left the house to clear her head _a few hours ago_ , and she's still angry with him? And for what, waking up that morning? Agreeing to do a favor for her?

This is starting to get unhealthy. As much as she hates him, this seems a _bit_ much, even for her. Maybe it's time to… confront him about it? Maybe? God, the thought of it makes her sick to her stomach, but even she can understand that something like that is probably necessary at this point...

“He’s probably just masturbating or something like that.” Momo says, blocking the thoughts from her mind momentarily to focus on the situation at hand. "He’s a disgusting piece of shit like that anyways."

“For a _few hours_ ?” Ene looks at her dubiously. “No matter how disgusting Master’s internet history is-- and trust me it is that bad-- I doubt he could hold out _that_ long.” She looks down, worrying at her sweater sleeves again. Then suddenly, she snaps back up, suddenly enough that it startles Momo just a bit. “I think he did something bad, can you come home and check on him???”

Momo groans inwardly. I _hope_ he did something bad. “Why can’t _you_ do it? Aren’t you in there with him right now?”

“Well he didn’t take his phone with him or anything, and it’s not like I’ve got a corporeal body anymore... I called his name a few times, but he’s not responding…” She hovers up closer to the screen as if to get closer to Momo’s face. “I’m really worried, can you please come home? Please? Just check on him… If anything’s wrong,” a despairing look washed over her face briefly, “If… anything’s wrong, I’ll call the hospital myself and everything, you don’t have to do anything else, just tell me if he’s alright, okay?”

Ene flies closer and closer as she speaks, until Momo imagines that she’s practically pressed up against the phone's glass screen. “I know you two don’t really get along, but--”

Momo sighs. “Okay, okay!” She snaps, cutting Ene off just to avoid _that_ awkward conversation. “I’ll be home soon I guess.” I hate you, Shintaro. “Wait up okay, I’m sure he’s fine.” I hope he’s dead.

Momo starts to walk home slowly, taking her sweet time so that on the off chance that her brother is actually in any danger he’d bleed out by the time she gets home. As she walks though, a strange feeling of dread starts to rise in her gut. Momo worries her lip as she walks.

Am I really that shitty of a person? Shintaro is disgusting, but do I really hate him that much? Enough to let him bleed himself out…

He’s done a lot for me. He’s been a good guy, really.

She starts to pick up the pace.

He never really _did_ anything to her, you know? It was never really Shintaro’s fault that Momo never had any friends, or that she was awful at school… Hell, he even offered to tutor her that one time, fuck!

Momo starts to run. Momo might wish that he’d cut too deep one day or take one too many sleeping pills, or even that he’d just eat some expired tuna one day or _something_ , and Shintaro might try and end his own damn life at least three times a month, but this time it's off. Something is different about _today’s_ suicidal, and while she can’t quite put a finger on it she doesn’t like it nonetheless. No, she didn’t like it one bit.

* * *

 Kisaragi Momo is full-on sprinting by the time she makes it home, feet slapping down the black tar of her driveway and flinging open her front door (she didn’t lock it when she’d left?), banging up the stairs quickly enough even that she slips on one of the steps. She's frantic, and confused at herself for it, but most of all she's scared.

Bathroom. Bathroom, bathroom, bathroom.

Here it is.

Momo bounds towards the closed door, the lack of windows in that hallway framing it in a menacing light. Just as her hand lands on the rusted, fake-gold doorknob her foot lands in a puddle on the ground. Momo looks down, making a face at the feeling of wet socks (ew) before realizing what it entailed.

Suddenly her body is seized with… fear? Excitement? No… no, no, the term is apprehension. Apprehension, another vocab word that her shitty brother probably already knows-- No. Momo shakes her head. She’s not supposed to think like that anymore, she’s not _allowed_ …

Gritting her teeth, she turns the handle and pushes open the door into the bathroom.

The first thing she notices is the water. It came from the bathtub, left on to the point of over-flowing. It's the source of the large puddle on the ground outside the door, and the water is strangely pink in color. She soon realizes that the pink color stems from…

Her brother, which is the second thing she notices. He lay on his side, unconscious, next to the bathtub. His arm is outstretched as if he were trying to slither into the tub. The pink color is blood, _his blood_ , sifting slowly out of numerous cuts on his wrists... and on his stomach too, judging from how the pink seems especially dark down towards his abdomen. Momo starts to laugh, a few dry chuckles forcing their way out of her throat in a moment of confusion, or maybe insanity. Maybe he really _did_ cut too deep this time, deep enough that all of his organs--

Momo vomits into the sink. Oh god, oh god oh god _oh god_. She falls to her knees, arm around her heaving torso. “Ene!” She calls in between gasps for air. “Call the hospital! Call them now, do it now!” She retches into her hands, dry heaving.

Is he dead? Did he die, did he really, really die?

She’s sitting in his blood, she realizes. She’s sitting in her brother’s blood.

Shit. Shit, shit shit _shit shit **shit shit** \--_

“Hey, hey bro…” Momo hates the shake in her voice. She doesn’t even like him, _she doesn’t even like him_. “Bro, brother.” She reaches out her trembling hand, placing it on his leg, and shakes him a little bit. “Bro…. Shintaro!”

Momo gets up off her ass and turns Shintaro over, patting him in the face a few times. He's pale, even more pale than he usually was (if it was even possible). “Shin! Hey, Shintaro!! Shin!”

I need to apply pressure to the wounds.

She stands up quickly to paw through the medicine cabinet for some kind of bandage, or adhesive or  _something_ \-- too quickly in fact, as she slips and crashes back onto the smooth, tile floor. Momo lays horizontally across her brother, crying into her hands. From pain? From despair? She can't tell anymore.

She is useless, useless, useless useless! Completely useless, awful, terrible excuse for family. Where did she get off, complaining about Shintaro abandoning her?

“It was me, it was me the whole time! I was the one who abandoned family!”

This is my fault. This is all my fault.

I did this.

“Shin,” Momo weeps, over and over. I’m sorry I abandoned you, I’m sorry I cursed your name, I’m sorry I wished that you’d die, day after day after day. Except those words wouldn’t come out, all that she could manage to squeeze out of her stupid, incompetent body. Was ‘Shin’.

Shin, Shin, _Shin, Shin, Shin Shin **Shin Shin Shin** \--_

He wakes up just as the sound of sirens can be start to be heard in the distance. Momo’s still laid across him, weeping.

“Momo…?” Shintaro questions, his voice barely a whisper. He's confused. He hurts. A lot.

It's cold, and Momo doesn't miss the quiet shiver he gives. His little sister’s sobs are cut off so abruptly that Shintaro starts to believe he’s done something wrong by waking up again. Which maybe he has… But just as the bitter taste of an apology is on his tongue, Momo speaks again.

“Shin,” she says, voice cracked, not bothering to move or even to look at him. “We should... talk sometime.”

“Yeah,” Shintaro agrees, weakly patting her on the leg, the only place he could really reach. “Yeah, let's do that.”


End file.
